An analytical model for straight hemming was developed based on minimum energy method to study the effect of flanging die corner radius on hemming qualities.In order to calculate plastic strain and strain energy more exactly,the neutral layer of specimen corner after hemming is assumed to be a half ellipse with its major semi-axis unknown.Isotropic hardening rule is adopted to describe bending and reverse bending processes neglecting Bauschinger effect.The model takes into account the material property parameters in order to satisfy a wide application range of different materials.Specimen profile,creepage/growing(roll-in/roll-out) and maximum equivalent strain are predicted,which are greatly influenced by the flanging die corner radius.Experimental facilities were designed and hemming experiments were undertaken.The predicted results of the present analytical model were compared to experimental data as well as finite element(FE) simulation results.It was confirmed that they are in good agreement,and the model can be used to evaluate whether the material used as an outer panel for hemming is appropriate and to optimize process parameters when the material used for hemming is changed.
Qian WANG Xiang-huai DONG He-zong LI Hai-ming ZHANG
For the traditional one-step formulations of using shell elements, the computations of the curvature variation and bending stiffness matrix were simplified by omitting the rotational DOFs （degrees of freedom） on the basis of initial flat blank and fully known final configuration. They were highly efficient but not suitable either for the forming processes with non-flat initial configurations or for one-step forward and multistep analyses. Thus, a one-step formulation based on the rotation-free BST （Basic Shell Triangle） element was presented. In this formulation, the penalty method was adopted to deal with contacts in the forming processes.
